The Moebius Arc
by Alara Rogers
Summary: An alternate universe in which there is no Stryfe, and Rogue dies instead of Joseph during the Magneto War.
1. Moebius Strip

_This is the beginning of an alternate universe. Other stories set in this universe may have nothing whatsoever to do with the events described in this story; be patient._

### Moebius Strip

He couldn't be here.

He shouldn't be here, but he was. In another few minutes Apocalypse's minions would storm this place and take the baby, the baby left unprotected as a deliberate bait. An elaborate plan to destroy Apocalypse, that had in the end succeeded, at far, far too terrible a price.

__

When you fight monsters, it's not enough to keep from becoming one. You have to keep from making more, too.

__

//I can't believe this,// a shadow sneered. _//All this effort to kill a baby, and for what? You know as well as I do that changing time changes nothing. You can't save your woman, you can't save your world. You're only being vindictive.//_

Apocalypse hadn't supposed to be able to possess his father.

Apocalypse wouldn't have tried, not then, if there'd been another alternative, if he'd been better off waiting ten years for a better host to grow up. Apocalpyse was nothing if not patient.

There was a story about a patient cat. It saw some tasty eggs, but decided baby birds would be tastier, so it waited. And the birds were born, but it decided they would be better when they were bigger, so it waited. And it waited and it waited and when it was just the right day and the birds were so juicy and delicious, they all flew away and the patient cat had nothing.

The world he came from was in flames, since he'd failed and his father had died and his greatest enemy had risen from his father's ashes and ended up consuming everything. The world had been Weak, and had fallen to the Strong. 

And so it goes.

__

//So you think you can solve things now?// Mocking laughter from the shadow. _//You can't change time. All you can do is split an alternate timeline. She's still dead, Nathan. She'll always be dead.//_

Crimson eye beams blasting Domino's skull to bits.

No, he wouldn't think about that.

He looked down at the baby. So trusting and innocent and small. Didn't know he was a poisoned apple, didn't know he was bait for a trap and that his whole life was to be warped and shaped by that purpose. He was just a baby.

Just like the photographs. Scott and Maddie and Nathan Christopher, later Scott and Jean and Nathan Christopher, happy little family. Same face. Same cutesy little wrinkling of his nose, like Tyler had done (_Oath, Tyler, and what becomes of you if I do this? Will you be saved, or never live?_) Looked a lot like Tyler, in fact. Despite himself he felt a begrudging warmth toward the baby. Poor little guy didn't know what he would be. Babies never did.

__

//How touching. Tell me, will you make it quick, or do you want him to suffer? One blow from that arm of yours ought to be quite sufficient to smash a baby's skull, don't you think?//

You couldn't be there when your clone died and not acquire a shadow. Even if you weren't a pure telepath. Magneto had obviously been hallucinating in the last days before he died, screaming at someone he couldn't see that it was all the invisible person's fault for not joining him and joining Xavier instead, for attacking him, for trying to stop him when if he'd given ground Magneto could have freed him and they could be working together now. Magneto had ended up attacking Apocalypse with so much power it had all but discorporated him, and when he'd been trying to recover Apocalypse had simply reformed and smashed in his skull. Jean had had a shadow of Maddie ever since Inferno. It came with the territory. But you didn't have to listen.

You could shut them out, so they could talk to you but they couldn't read you, so they could see what you were doing but not read what it meant. It was annoying and meant you had to put up with crap all the time, but it was better than engaging them in conversation.

For a while he'd had another shade, but the boy had burned his candle at both ends for so long that when he'd died, he'd mostly simply faded. This other shade, though, was persistent.

About two minutes until Apocalypse's goons got in here. He could hear the fighting outside.

He opened the lid to the nursery unit the baby was in and took him out. The baby started to wail, but a quick telepathic "shh" ended that.

Argument with Xavier, at Westchester, before Xavier died. He'd been arguing that the objection to going back in time and killing your enemies as babies was practical, not moral-- it created an alternate timeline, but it was otherwise perfectly justifiable. Xavier argued there was no justifiable moral reason, ever, for killing an innocent child. And Kitty Pryde had looked at them both with a thousand-year stare that had no place on a woman so young, and told them they were both idiots.

If you're going to intervene, she said, you don't have to kill. Your enemies are usually your enemies because their lives were miserable-- wasn't that the reason the X-Men kept taking in and reforming enemies? So you intervene at a different level. Change their lives. Teach them to not be enemies. If Hitler hadn't been raised an anti-Semite, would the Holocaust have ever happened?

__

//What's the delay, "brother?" Winding up for the kill?//

This time, Cable replied. _//You're still an idiot, Stryfe.//_

And opened the timedoor.

__

Hey, Nathan. You're somewhere in this complex, somewhere safe. I can't do anything about you directly. Since the moment Apocalypse infected you with the T-O, your destiny's been written in stone, despite everything I've done to change it, despite everything you'll do. But I can take a roadblock out of your way, kid. Maybe this time, you'll succeed.

You'll never meet Dom, probably, but then, maybe Aliya won't die. Maybe it can all balance out.

As for you, little bait, I need you somewhere else. And you need to be there too.

Let's go.

He stepped through.

__

//You can't mean to do this.//

Westchester, New York. Shortly before the wedding.

__

//I don't believe it. You can't be doing this.//

He ignored the shadow. He had long practice.

Cloaked from telepaths, he rang the doorbell.

Jubilee answered. And blinked. "Hey... uh... you're Cable, aren't you?"

"I need to speak to Scott Summers and Jean. It's a matter of great urgency."

She cracked her gum. "What's with the rugrat?"

He gave her a patented glare. "Get Summers and Jean for me. Now."

"Okay, okay, I'm going, already. Sheesh. I'm not, like, the doorwoman or something." Her comments continued as she walked out of earshot, but he wasn't listening anymore-- not as if he had been exactly listening the first time either.

Jubilee was not a hardened killer, now. 1407 Greymalkin Lane was still standing, and in good shape. His heart hurt.

__

//A bit of a sentimental journey, "brother?"// The voice was still sarcastic, but with an element of confusion. _//Perhaps you'd like to tell me why, exactly, you're here?//_

And perhaps he wouldn't.

Jean appeared at the door. "Cable?" She blinked. "Cerebro didn't detect you incoming. What's going on?"

She recognized him. If she recognized him then it meant he'd failed. This gambit hadn't worked, Nathan had still come to the past, the timeline in the future wasn't changed at all.

He almost turned and ran. There had to be a way. If he was going to change so much it had to _work_, if he was going to create a whole new timeline to replace the one that had been annihilated it couldn't fail. But he had to play this out. Go with the plan, then see if there was a workaround. All Jean knew was that he was Cable, so she recognized him, so this world had a Cable. Was it Nathan from the future, or was it _him?_

"Where's Cyclops?"

"Cyclops?" Her voice was uncertain, and while she had a telepath's usual shields, he could suddenly empathically sense that she was not expecting "Cable" to call Scott "Cyclops." What was she expecting? "Dad?" 

"Look, I don't even know if I'm the Cable you know. I've just come from the future. I have to--"

An emotionflash from her stopped him, as she fixed on the baby, his words bringing her sudden recognition. "My god. Oh my god, Cable, is that--"

"Chris," Cable said, nodding. "Christopher Nathan, to be exact, though if I were you I'd seriously consider changing his middle name. Maddie got the name from Sinister; it's _his_ real name, and I don't think you want your kid named after Sinister." In name symbology, he'd always found that annoying about his own name. That and he didn't want the kid named Nathan, when for all he knew the Askani were still going to come and summon Slym and Redd to take care of the real Nathan, back in the future. Better if their other son was Chris. 

There must have been a telepathic shout, because Scott came all but flying down the stairs in the moment when Jean reached for the baby. "Jean!" And then, "Cable! Is it true?"

"Yeah," he said roughly, lying, but they'd find that out eventually. Besides. If Jean was his mother than Chris was her son. The clone of a clone's son, it was all blood relations in the end. 

Jean took Chris from him, cuddling him. "We never-- we never thought we'd _see _him again. And he's cured. Look, Scott! No T-O virus! He's safe!"

__

//How nice,// the shadow said in a note of desperate sarcasm._ //A happy bouncy baby boy all cured of that mean T-O. Too bad he's not the real one. I wouldn't like to be in his shoes when they find out.//_

Cable ignored the comment.

"My son..." Scott stared down at the baby gurgling in Jean's arms. He looked up. "Cable, I don't know how we'll ever repay you--"

"I'll tell you," he said roughly. He was a hardened mercernary who remembered watching these people die. He would _not_ cry. "You're going to be sent to an alternate timeline someday where your son was never healed. He'll be Nathan, there. You'll take care of him and raise him the best way you can. That's the only way you're going to repay me."

"But what does that do for _you?_" Scott asked. "You've done so much for our family-- you helped the New Mutants, you've saved our lives, what does any of this have to do with _you?_"

"You'll figure it out someday," he said.

And inside, a shadow.

__

//But they-- but they don't know. You didn't tell them. He's only the clone--//

//They won't care. Brother. They never would have, if they'd known about you.//

__

//So why did you lie? Why did you tell them he's you, when he's me?//

__

//What they don't know, Apocalypse won't know.//

__

//Oh, I see your clever plan now. And to think I almost thought you cared, sweet brother. You do hate me, enough to sacrifice me to stop Apocalypse five thousand years early. So glad to see you're not going soft.//

__

//I never flonqing hated you until you made me, with your actions. I never flonqing wanted you to be sacrificed for my safety. I never chose to have a clone made to decoy Apocalypse.//

__

//But you're using that clone to decoy Apocalypse now.//

__

//Yeah, why the flonq not? You get what you always wanted. Apocalypse won't raise him, they will. And they'll love him the way you thought they never would, because they're better than you, they're better than you ever imagined. And Apocalypse won't try to take me and get Scott instead. He'll try to take Chris, when Scott's too old to be a choice, and it won't work any more than it worked with you, and Apocalypse will die... because I'll make flonqing sure Chris is backed up by people who'll know how to kill him. I'm not going to leave him alone to deal with it, like you were. The flonqing Askani made him to stop Apocalypse, I don't care what Rachel thinks she was doing, that's what it was about. It didn't work because it made you instead. This time he'll have loving parents who don't try to consume his soul. This time he won't be alone. And so he won't be you.//

Silence.

__

//I'm better than you. And I always was. I don't have to kill you to save my future and make a liveable past. I can save you, and it does the same thing.

Now you can be better than you, too.//

Weakly. _//Bravo, Nathan. Bravo.//_

The Nathan of the future wouldn't be coming back here, not without a Stryfe to stand against him and turn the tide of battle against the Canaanites. He could lead a happy life in the future, with Aliya, with no Stryfe to kill her.

But there still needed to be a Cable, here, apparently. _Someone_ had to train X-Force. Someone had to make sure the younger generation would know what to do, when Chris met up with Apocalypse however many years from now. An old broken man who'd seen two worlds, two timelines, destroyed would never be alive that long. But he could live long enough to make sure someone who would be, would know what to do.

He'd have to open the timedoor one more time.

__

//And what happens when they meet up with his twin? What happens when they meet you? Will they realize who was the clone and who was real?//

//When they meet Nate-in-the-future, maybe they'll figure out I lied and Chris is a clone, and maybe they won't. I don't care. I don't think they'll care, either. But you'll never believe that till you see it, will you?//

//I don't think-- I can.//

__

//No, because then you'd have to accept that your reason to hate is gone. Can't accept that your whole life was a waste, spent punishing people for sins they never committed? Can't accept that this time around, you're going to have everything you ever really wanted, and it's going to solve all my problems, too?//

But he sensed, even in sending it, that there was no longer anyone or anything there to receive his reply. After so many years, his shadow had gone.

Perhaps, after holding onto his pain for so long, he couldn't bear to see that none of it had been necessary.

__

Goodbye, old enemy. Be a better person this time around.

Jean looked up at him, eyes shining with unshed happy tears. "We'll do anything you ask," she said. "Within the limits of what we _can_ do. But you've brought us back Scott's son. Words aren't enough, thanks aren't enough--"

"Don't worry about it. Just love him. That's all."

He turned and walked back out, and summoned the timedoor before anyone could stop him.

Time to go back to the beginning.


	2. To Gain The World

To Gain The World

Well, happy me. I've got everything I ever wanted.

Mutantkind has a homeland now, a place of safety and freedom where we can be who we are, without the fear of the mob that's driven me my whole life. It's not what I dreamed of-- what I dreamed of was converting my adopted homeland, the land of supposed freedom, into a place where mutants can be free. But that isn't going to happen, so this is the next best thing.

And I still work for other people-- worse yet, I work for someone who I used to consider a rival. But at least he's not human. And where I used to be a peon, an agent, a strand in someone else's web, now I'm the spider. In America the best I managed was to work for someone who worked for someone who worked for someone and it all stretched upward into the dark blur of Classified, Black Ops. Now I run the black ops. I'm the spymaster of Genosha, responsible for identifying threats to Genoshan security from inside and out, answerable only to the Governor (which is a damn stupid name, but I guess I can see why he wouldn't pick something like Fuhrer or Generalissimo.) World leaders know and fear me. I have been banned from nearly every country in the developed world, which is laughable, because how could they keep me out? More to the point, how do they expect to keep my agents out? I'm not just a pretty shifting face, and they're learning that, to their pain.

Why yes, I have everything I ever fought to have.

And all I had to pay for it was my daughter's life.

I've thought, of course, about killing Magneto.

He started the war. He held the world hostage, knowing _someone_ might die and it might even be mutants. He knew the X-Men would come for him, and that he might have to kill a few of them. He did it anyway.

But Magneto didn't kill her. He didn't force her to attack him. He didn't suggest she take Joseph's powers and repair the magnetosphere for him. He didn't order the X-Men to assault him so he couldn't fix the damage himself, or even help with it. He didn't create the crisis that needed Joseph to fix it.

I trained Rogue to fight at my side, knowing she might die of it, because I believed. Mutantkind needed to ensure its safety, and if I died, Rogue died, Irene died to save mutantkind, it was a small sacrifice. You really can't be a terrorist unless you're willing to see everyone you love die for your beliefs. And I've often thought I could deal with Irene's death better if she had died for something real, something that actively benefited mutantkind, not my stupid idea that if we helped the US government they'd be forced to acknowledge us and give us protections. 

Well, it turns out it's not true. Rogue died for a mutant homeland and it's still killing me. If it weren't for the Prozac I'd probably have blown my brains out by now. (Magneto, by the way, does not know about the Prozac and my psychiatrist doesn't know I'm Mystique, Genoshan Minister of Security, and if either of them ever find out someone will have to die.) But I can't hate Magneto for risking her life, when I, her mother, did the same and much more explicitly. After all, he didn't _ask_ her to attack him, whereas I _did_ ask her to kill Carol Danvers, an act that risked her life and, for many years, destroyed it. So no, I'm not going to kill Magneto. He gambled for a mutant homeland, the dream of safety for mutantkind that's driven me too for so many years, and he won, and paid only a small price-- one life. One mutant life, lost. In any war, that's a success.

I appear to him sometimes with her face, and he screams at me and tells me he'll kill me if he does it again, and that makes me happy. He loved her in his way, and the guilt of her death rips him apart inside, and I love to twist the knife. He got my daughter killed, he should suffer. But I won't kill him. Mutantkind needs him and I'd be a damned hypocrite.

I've thought even harder about killing Joseph.

Tool. Useless sack of protoplasm. A copy, not even a real person at all, and Rogue died for _him._ Because they knew for certain that his engineered body couldn't withstand the stress of holding the magnetosphere within it and knitting it together. They all knew it would kill him. Rogue, however, figured she was invulnerable, and that she could handle it. So she took his powers from him... and his fucking genetic instability, and _she_ burned herself to nothing. Irreplaceable Rogue died for Magneto Mark 2: The Wuss Version. Sometimes I'd like to slit his throat over the unfairness of it all.

I think the main reason I don't is that he'd let me.

Joseph has acquired much more of a backbone than he apparently used to have, from hanging around his originator rather than the Xavierites. But when I appear to _him_ in Rogue's form, he doesn't threaten to kill me, or rage, or shout. His eyes just turn very, very sad, and I can see that his heart is broken, and he hates himself for living when she's dead, and if I told him he had to die for his crime in surviving what should have killed him and killed Rogue instead, I think he'd let me. He loved her far more intensely than Magneto did. And I've seen that he has nightmares about it, as he should.

Besides, if Rogue died to save his life, and I killed him, I'd be spitting on her sacrifice. _She_ didn't think she was dying for a mutant homeland; my poor stupid daughter was fighting _against_ the mutant homeland, on the wrong side with the rest of the misguided Xavierites, again. She thought she was dying for someone she loved. Just like Irene...

...no, I'm not going to cry. I have pills for that.

And you don't want to know how many times I've fantasized about killing Charles Xavier.

Yes, let's fight against every initiative that _might_ actually wrest control over mutant lives from hateful or uncaring humans and give it back to the mutants. Why, it makes perfect sense to brainwash teenage girls into fighting their loving mothers for the sake of a cure that they never, ever do in fact get. While we're at it, let's demonize the mutants who stand against us, until they agree to join us, in which case let's embrace them wholeheartedly! All the better to brainwash you with, my dear. Peace and Love will save the day, so let's beat up everyone who doesn't agree!

God. Someone shoot that man.

The trouble is, of course, that he _did_ help Rogue. He didn't remove the Carol in her head; apparently Magneto did that. And he didn't enable her to touch. But he more or less cured the madness she was suffering from, the torment Carol was putting her through. Until he went to space and ignored his responsibility to her, but that's another story. I did my best to give her a loving family... well, he did the same. And I still hate him for that, but she loved him like the father she never had. 

And he's not the one who taught her to be heroic and to fight to save her adopted family from anything, and to sacrifice it all for what she believed to be right. Damn me, _I_ did that. I taught her the ends justified the means and if you have to kill, or die, for what is right or who you love, then you do it. So she did it. Damn me.

I'm not going to kill Charles Xavier. As I said, I try to avoid being a hypocrite. And following his cause might have killed her in the end, but before it did, it made her happy. That's better than I could do for her, however much I wanted to.

But I had to kill _someone_ for Rogue's death. So I picked Astra.

Astra, the beautiful bitch goddess with the remarkable tongue, who managed to seduce the seducer and then run away, stealing a heart and any number of valuable things I'd acquired in my life. I actually fucking well introduced her to Margali and my son, and she repaid me by running off with my stuff, conning the conner. Then she met Magneto and apparently could not get into his pants, which were magnetized to the crotch of his dead bitch human wife, so she decided she had to kill him. Well, Magneto beating her senseless on more than one occasion probably had something to do with it, but then, you don't drug and attempt to force sex on men who are more powerful than you are. Most men don't appreciate being raped any more than women do, even if you _have_ drugged them into thinking you're their dead wife. I heard all this from Astra when she was trying to justify to me why she absolutely had to have Magneto dead, and she absolutely had to kill him with his own clone (poor lil Astra couldn't do it herself! might break a nail, poor wittle thief!), and she absolutely had to do it while he was holding the magnetosphere together by force of willpower. I just filtered out a lot of the self-justifications, because I know Astra. Sleeping her way through Who's Who In The Mutant Universe, that's our girl. Nothing wrong with that inherently, of course. Nothing inherently wrong in trying to get revenge on a man who rejected you, either. But if it creates a dangerous situation that might kill thousands of people, you're a stupid bitch. And if it creates a dangerous situation that my daughter dies to rectify, then you're a stupid dead bitch.

I gave Magneto Astra's head, after he gave me the position as Minister of Security. He turned slightly white and said that he would have taken my word for it that she was disposed of, and had it been truly necessary to gouge her eyes out and pull her teeth before she was dead? I told him that she was responsible for Rogue's death, and I wanted to make sure she paid for it. He didn't know what Astra had done to _me_, and I didn't tell him. Let him think my murderous rage was mostly over Rogue. It'll keep him on his toes, because he blames himself, too.

Joseph refused to look. He insisted on burying Astra's head, on the grounds that she _did_ create him. He also told me I did the right thing and that he was grateful to me for killing her, because he wasn't sure he was capable of it. I'm sure he wasn't. She built in failsafes. Maybe that's another reason I let Joseph live, because he hated the bitch and wanted her dead for Rogue's sake and his own, just like me.

It made me feel better. But it didn't solve anything. Rogue's still dead.

And I demanded to be made Minister of Security, because if my daughter died in the battle for a mutant homeland, Magneto damn well _owes_ me to let me do my best to protect that homeland. I probably owe Rogue's death for that. After the way I humiliated him when he surrendered to me, I doubt Magneto would otherwise have given me the time of day. But he knew I was the best qualified for the job, outside of a telepath and it's awfully unlikely Magneto would have trusted any telepath who was actually willing to be Minister of Security. Telepaths come in two flavors: overly ethical and totally amoral. They don't come in gray, like I do. And he knew that if my daughter had to die to let Magneto achieve the dream _I_ had always fought for, and hoped someone would achieve, that either I'd kill him or I'd give my life to the dream to make sure her sacrifice meant something. And he's not dead yet.

It tears me up inside that if my daughter hadn't died, I probably _wouldn't_ have a position of power in Genosha. I wouldn't have been able to guilt Magneto into giving it to me, even though he needs the position filled and I'm the most qualified candidate. Which means everything I achieve, everything I do to protect the mutant homeland, is tainted by Rogue's blood. Without a dead daughter I would never be able to do what I'm doing.

What I'm doing is vitally important. Genosha has literally millions of enemies, within and without. Without a spymaster to identify and neutralize threats before they become serious, even Magneto would be overwhelmed, and the mutant homeland would fall, and we'd be a disenfranchised minority race, persecuted the world over, once more. I know I could never be a ruler, like Magneto; it's not in my personality to do that. All I ever thought I'd be able to do is pave the way for other mutants to succeed and achieve power. Now, I'm doing what I do best, in the service of the dream I've given much of my life to, protecting my people and wielding power and authority in my own right. Everything I'd ever wanted.

I would give it all up to have my daughter alive.

Oh, Rogue, you fool. You brave fool. You didn't need to die for Joseph. You didn't need to try to save his life. He was just a clone, he didn't mean anything. Didn't I teach you better than to throw away your life for a man? You weren't even in love with him, and you _knew_ he was just a copy. Why did you do it?

I'll never see you fall in love with someone who isn't poison for you. I'll never see you succeed at what you want to do in life. You'll never learn to control your powers, you'll never see what good your sacrifice has done for mutantkind. 

I'll never see you again.

I have everything I ever wanted, and my daughter is dead.

And if I make sure I keep well supplied with antidepressants, maybe I won't blow my head off.


	3. Roman A Clef 1: 4 AM

_This story is the first of three (so far) loosely autobiographical fanfic pieces, that I refer to as the Roman A Clef series. They are set within the larger universe of the Moebius Arc._

* * *

****

4 AM

He's sleeping now. It took a few hours to calm him this time, and now I can't sleep. I'm staring outside at the sky still dark-- we're not even getting a false dawn yet -- wondering what I'm doing here. Wondering why I'm doing this, why I've rejected everything I believed in and everything I loved to run off here, with him. And hating the people who used to be my best friends, because of what they're doing to him.

Today he offered to let them come here, to see for themselves what he'd built. I wanted them so badly to agree, to see how much better things are here in Genosha than they were before, to see that he's not the monster we feared when we all fought him, back when Rogue died and the UN gave him the country. Yeah, I _know_ how angry we all were, how it felt like one of our number, one of our oldest friends, had died to stop this, and we'd _won_, and the UN buckled anyway. I know how sick we all felt. I know how enraged we all were when Joseph defected, how we felt like he was spitting on Rogue's grave. But things have _changed_. Magnus really has turned the country around. He really has made this place-- not a Utopia, I don't think anyone could, but a good place. A place where I'm happy to live.

They refused.

Scott spoke for all of them, or they let Scott speak for them, which is worse, really. He said that the X-Men had no interest in a propaganda show put on by a terrorist dictator. And none of them spoke up against that. None of them contacted us separately, even though I doubt very much Scott would have hidden the invitation from them. Not Ororo, not Kurt. Hell, not even Piotr, and I expected _he_ at least would want to be here. 

When I came here I accepted that maybe our methods weren't the only methods there could ever be, that maybe the Dream was good in theory but lacked when we put it into practice. Maybe there needed to be alternatives. I didn't expect them to turn on me for thinking so. I didn't expect that they'd attack Magneto for "brainwashing" me and try to kidnap me.

Ironic, that, considering I did the same damn thing to Piotr, in another life. Maybe I was just short-sighted not to realize what they'd do, to realize that they'd call me a traitor and then cut most contact with me, sharing only the barest minimum of information about the people we'd all loved, the things we had in common. They don't tell me anything they think might be of "strategic" importance, they don't reveal weaknesses, and they talk to me-- when they talk to me, when they bother to answer my phone calls-- in generalities. Sure, everyone's doing well. No, Kurt and Amanda are still separated, no we don't know what Amanda's doing with the Soulsword. Yes, Dr. MacTaggert is still hanging in there. You know, I'm not sure they'd tell me if she _did_ die. Because, see, I'm sleeping with the enemy, and god knows that if I told Magnus that Dr. MacTaggert had died, he'd summon demons from hell to carry off her soul, right?

I hate them. 

But I wanted to believe. I always want to believe, always want to hope, that _this_ time they'll open up, this time they'll look at the evidence and not the knee-jerk reaction they seem to have brainwashed themselves into. So I hoped that when he made the overture, they would accept it. That for once they'd actually deign to _look_ at the reality of the situation and not at their prejudices.

And they didn't. And they hurt him, I can tell. He won't admit it, but I know it. It's like a stab to his heart that even Ororo is going along with this. So his solution is to work harder, and stay up later, and then wake screaming with nightmares.

He told me about his dream. Normally he doesn't make himself so vulnerable, but he was so desperate, clinging to me, burying his face in my hair, trying to convince himself I was here and real. I've seen that before. He's not the first lover I've had with ghosts. So I talked him into telling me, and he told me. It was a nightmare where Wolverine was trying to kill him, and I stepped in to try to talk some sense into Logan, and he cut me down, snikt, sliced in half. Magnus wasn't that graphic, but I get the idea. The thought chills me. I _loved_ Wolverine, loved him like he was my dad, my favorite uncle, the big brother I never had. Hell, the dad I never had. The dad I did have was a poor second at best, more likely a fourteenth. And I'm not entirely sure that Magnus's dream wouldn't go exactly like that, if it happened.

Except no, it wouldn't go like that. How it would go is, Logan would try to get through me to kill Magnus, and I'd get in his way, and he'd _try_ to kill me. But I wouldn't be stupid enough to let him. And then I'd kill him.

I feel sick. Magnus is sleeping again. He doesn't know that the poison he let out of his own system is poisoning me; I'd never tell him or he'd never open up to me again. But I just keep thinking about how hateful the people I loved are being to the man I love, and it's killing me.

And the thing is, I might still be one of them. Might still be a happy sheep, believing everything Almighty Father Xavier and his high priests tell me to believe, if not for Pete--

--sometimes I think Magnus _is_ Pete, when I'm just waking up from one of those dreams where I'm still in Excalibur and we haven't broken up and everyone's alive. I think he is, and I'm going to talk to him, and then I see silver hair in the moonlight and I remember. Pete's dead.

If he'd been killed in the line of duty it'd hurt like hell. If he'd drunk himself to death or fallen off a bridge during a particularly heinous pubcrawl I'd have cried my eyes out for days. But it wasn't like that.

In bloody fucking England where he bloody fucking sold his soul to protect the bloody fucking humans who _used_ to accept us, back in the Excalibur days, he got shot in the back of the head by human supremacists and the police did nothing. Nothing. NO THING with all caps. It took my connections and old friends of his to track down what happened.

Hey, good show, Prof. Ever since you started your brave little Dream with us X-Peons going out in our spandex to save the world, not only has the good old US of A started to periodically hunt us with Sentinels or look the other way when someone else does, but the poison's even spreading to other countries that hadn't _had_ it before. And I'm supposed to risk my life for this? I'm supposed to sacrifice everything, for this?

I believed in this. Since I was a teenager, I gave myself to this, heart and soul. I was one of the most devout followers of the Dream. And I managed to overlook that it wasn't _working_ until a man I loved got killed by its failure. And then the X-Men acted like this was just a momentary lapse brought on by grief, that I wasn't being rational and of course I'd come to my senses as soon as I got over Pete's death, and why was I so upset when after all I dumped the guy, and all in all it really made me angry. Treating me like a child, again, or like some poor lost sheep who needs guidance back to the One True Way.

Magnus contacted me about something entirely different; he wasn't trying to recruit me to Genosha, he was trying to get my advice about something pertaining to computers. Magnus is a first-class programmer and computer wizard, but he's a mainframe kind of guy; he has relatively little experience with PC's, the Internet, or hacking. Specifically hacking. Magnus was too old for hacking when he first got into computers; it's something you get into when you're young. But we started to talk, and I started to realize that if I was questioning everything else, I might as well question our recent "Magneto has reverted into the ultimate evil" attitude. I mean, he'd been my teacher. He was the only one who could get through to 'Yana after everything happened. He'd saved my life and Rachel's sanity. And I'd tried to kill him by phasing an icicle into his chest, for no better reason than Professor Xavier told the X-Men to stop him. Okay, yeah, he was being a terrorist, threatening the entire world again just like he did when I was a kid, the first (and up till then only) time I'd fought him. And he was in the middle of a pitched battle with Joseph that was threatening to destroy the magnetosphere, and we had to stop it.

I found out later that if we hadn't intervened and attacked Magnus, Rogue might not be dead. Joseph and Magneto were fighting in a burning building because Astra was forcing Joseph to, and if we'd chased her off and separated the combatants _without_ trying to kill one of them, maybe the two of them would have been able to work together to heal the damage they'd done. Magnus couldn't do it alone, he was already half burnt out, but he might have been able to lend guidance to Joseph so the poor guy wouldn't discorporate himself trying to fix the problem-- or to Rogue after she intervened to save Joseph. If Rogue hadn't taken Joseph's powers, if she hadn't thought she needed to because it was killing Joseph to work alone and she thought she was strong enough to survive it, she wouldn't be dead. If Magneto and Joseph, or Magneto and Rogue, had been able to work together, no one would have died. Instead we assumed Magneto was in the wrong, that the wild storm threatening to destroy the magnetosphere was _caused_ by him and not by Joseph attacking him, and we tried to kill him. I tried to kill him. Without thinking, without questioning. And I believed that X-Men shouldn't kill!

That was wrong. My attitude was wrong. The X-Men's attitude was wrong. We were condemning a man without actually looking at what he was doing, based solely on past knowledge 'cause he used to be a big mean bad guy, see. And I hated him for what he'd done to Wolverine, without quite considering that Wolvie had sliced the man's guts open while the Professor and Jean were doing the same thing to his mind. I loved Wolverine like a father, but how was I supposed to argue with the fact that Wolverine had tried _several_ times to kill Magneto, and this was the first time Magneto had seriously struck back, and he was being driven out of his head by the Professor at the time? I'm not that much of a hypocrite. I'll defend the people I love to the death... but not if they were in the wrong.

So I went to Genosha. I checked things out. I was impressed, and disturbed, and upset. Magnus was trying to turn the country around, but the fact that even though the UN recognized Genosha no one else did, and the only thing the Russians and Americans and Israelis could agree on was trade embargo to Genosha, and the only thing keeping the country fed was Magnus dealing with rogue states like Latveria for trade... and there was this huge population of mutates who couldn't breed, or even enjoy a sex life, because of their skinsuits, so they were focused on brooding on their hate and the way they'd suffered instead, and what was left of the human population was living in terror because of it... all these things. The Legacy virus running rampant, affecting something like 40% of the mutate population. Poverty. Filth. Magnus with no powers, depending on Joseph, who he didn't trust and so he brought in a backstabbing scumwad like Cortez, who he _knew_ he couldn't trust. And with all this he was _still_ turning the country around, slowly but surely.

I decided to help.

The X-Men called me a traitor.

I did the same thing to Piotr. I guess maybe I deserved it.

I never expected to fall in love with Magnus.

In the beginning it was purely business; I joined his cabinet as the token former X-Man. Given my age I think a lot of people thought I was only there as a dig at Xavier. I was 20. Even Moreau and Ransome, previously the kids on the cabinet, were older than me. Okay, technically Joseph is much younger than me, but with most of Magnus' memories rattling around in his head now he might as well be the 30-something he now looks, a contemporary of Pietro.

But Magnus always respected me. Always respected my mind. He said he put me on the cabinet because I was a genius and because unlike half of his cabinet, who were all playing some kind of double games, he knew I would be totally focused on doing the best I could for the mutants of Genosha. He said that my age and naivete meant I might be able to come up with creative solutions, since I wouldn't know what was generally accepted to be a stupid idea, and maybe I might be able to make a stupid idea work. He said he needed someone at his back who he could trust not to try to kill him if the political winds shifted, and he couldn't even trust his own son, or his own clone, for that. 

I don't know when things changed, when I went from seeing him as a former teacher who'd gone psycho and maybe was managing to work his way back to sanity, to a man. Things change, in seven years. I was a kid when I'd last known him, still barely getting over Piotr, and the idea that Captain Forrester would actually _kiss_ him totally grossed me out. There's been a lot of time since then. Pete was twelve years older than me. Once you start dating people that much older than you are, once you're an adult and you can prove you're an adult, you start losing any sense of age distance. I broke up with Pete because I wanted to date men my own age, I said, but that was an excuse and I knew it. I was scared of how close we'd gotten, how fast it had gone. I was scared I was going to be tied down for the rest of my life. So I broke his heart, and now he's dead. I won't make that mistake again.

I know Magnus was reluctant to start anything with me. He acted like I was still a kid at first, like seeing me as anything other than that was some sort of vile betrayal of trust. I had to prove it to him, as I'd been proving it to him since I first came to Genosha, that I'm a grownup now. I make my own choices, my own decisions. I chose him.

And I don't regret it. I've thrown aside everything else, shattered my life for the sake of what I believe, undergone a sea change in who I am and how I live, and it's all going to be worth it someday. It's worth it now. But I can't get any sleep, because I'm trying so hard to help him, while my former friends are tearing me to bits. This isn't the first time. It won't be the last.

If I could only make them see, if I could only get _through_ to them, hello, this is your old teammate Shadowcat, you used to think I had a brain in my head, why won't you _listen_ to me? Do you seriously think I could stay brainwashed this long? The _Shadow King_ couldn't hold me this long. This is Magneto we're talking about, not an evil telepath. If you ever respected my opinion, why don't you respect it enough to listen to me now? Are you so convinced of your hatred, so fixated on your opinion and your conviction that you're right that you can't change? _Professor Xavier_ cuts him more slack than you do, though he lies about it and tells you all he wants Magneto defeated because Magneto is evil, all the while having conversations with him and arguing with him and negotiating with him but it's all behind your backs, because the Prof is too much of a hypocrite to admit to you that Magnus is _not evil._ And _you_ are so focused on defending the honor of Professor Xavier's Dream that you won't recognize that it doesn't need defending, not this way, not from him. How could you be so stupid? So shallow? You were my best friends; I thought better of you.

My stomach hurts. I want to cry, but that will wake him up, and I just managed to get him to go to sleep. I'm younger than he is, and I have fewer responsibilities, and less messing me up in the head. I can take it.

It's 4 AM and I have to be up at 7, to begin the work I came here for, the work of saving a country. Almost no point in going to sleep at all. I stare out the window, just barely beginning to lighten with false dawn. 


	4. Roman A Clef 2: This Is The Way It Ends

_This story is the first of three (so far) loosely autobiographical fanfic pieces, that I refer to as the Roman A Clef series. They are set within the larger universe of the Moebius Arc._

This one is anti-dedicated to K. Tris. May you live a long life continuing to alienate everyone who loved you, and die an old man, alone and bitter. 

* * *

****

This Is The Way It Ends

"So this is it, huh? You're not going to entertain the remotest possibility that I know what I'm doing, that I haven't turned traitor."

"You're workin' with the enemy. You expect me to trust you now?"

"What I _expected_ was that maybe you'd trust me when I said he's not the enemy anymore. But I guess that was too much to expect, huh?"

"Yeah, Pryde. You've shacked up with one of the most infamous terrorists on the planet, who's got his own damn national base of operations now, which I shouldn't haveta remind you he got by _killing_ Rogue. You wanna think with your goddamn crotch instead of the trainin' you got here, that's your business, but don't expect me to like it, or play nice with you anymore."

"I am _not_ thinking with my crotch, damn you! What fucking business of yours is it anyway if I'm sleeping with him? I didn't join him because I was sleeping with him, that came months later. I chose to join him because the X-Men haven't accomplished a bloody thing and he has, and I want to be part of a Dream that works."

"Even if it means you gotta spit on everything you used ta believe in."

"But I'm not. I'm working for the same thing you and the X-Men are, only most of you are too bloody pigheaded to see it. I can accept Scott being a prick because he's who he is and I can accept Gambit never being able to forgive Magnus over Rogue, who by the way he did _not_ kill--"

"He was committin' a crime against the world. She tried to stop him and she died for it. Doesn't matter if he didn't mean to kill her, his hand was on the trigger."

"--I can't accept _you_ doing this. You of all people. You worked with him, respected him--"

"--And he betrayed all of us."

"Don't fucking interrupt me!"

"I'll say what I goddamn want when I want, Pryde. I listen to people I respect. It's just because of who you used ta be that I'm listening to you this much, but I ain't gonna do what you want."

"Yeah, I know _that._ Because it doesn't matter that you used to be my best male friend, practically my dad, that you were the person I looked up to more than anything else in the world. You can't accept that I've grown up, and that I can make my own choices."

"I accepted Wisdom, didn't I?"

"Yeah, and that's why you're a bloody hypocrite. Because your past isn't clean, and Pete's past wasn't clean, but oh my God I'm sleeping with Magneto so no matter how many times I tell you he's changed, that Genosha _works_, you won't listen to me. _I'm_ just turned by the enemy."

"Wisdom never blackmailed the whole damn world. Neither did I."

"I didn't like that any more than you did--"

"Tell it to Rogue, why don'tcha?"

"Goddamn it, Logan, Rogue died because she was trying to save Joseph--"

"--And nice way he repaid her, too."

"Yeah, he did. This was the best way he could see to make her sacrifice count for something. Think it's a coincidence that Mystique works for us too?"

"Naah, I thought it was because Mystique is an opportunistic bitch and 'd use her daughter's death to push her own political agenda even if it meant getting into bed with the guy who killed her."

"You don't know how broken up Magnus was over Rogue. He never wanted her dead!"

"Too bad for him it ended up that way."

"Yeah, I guess so. Too bad for her that we fucking well didn't let Magnus do a damn thing to help her because we were too busy beating on him while she was trying to save the magnetosphere all by herself. We killed her just as much as he did by trying to kill him while he could have been helping her."

"Yeah, we were just so eager to let a terrorist who was tryin' ta destroy the planet get another shot."

"He wasn't _trying_ to destroy the planet!"

"Says you, Pryde. He tell you that durin' pillow talk? Tells you how all broken up he is over Rogue, too, right?"

"And what, because he says it it can't be true?"

"Magnus is a psycho. Thought you'd have recognized that from the first time he sold us all out. Sure, he _feels_ things, but he shuts it off when it comes time to do what he thinks he's gotta do. He'll destroy anyone and anything to get what he wants and rationalize that it was the only way. And if you're supporting him, you're playing into the schemes of a manipulatin', power-mad dictator who _really_ only gives a shit about havin' so much power he thinks no one can threaten him anymore, which'll never happen even if he _does_ take over the world, but he's too fucked in the head to see that. He's dangerous, and no matter how nice and sweet he looks now, he's always gonna be dangerous."

"How's that any different from you? You'd kill someone you loved to do what you thought you needed to do. You've done it before."

"Difference between us is, I'm not out for personal power or glory. I do it for my own honor and I do it because I think it's right or because it needs doin'."

"So does he!"

"Tell me then, why does what he thinks needs doin' usually end up with him in charge?"

"Yeah, like he was so in charge of the X-Men back when. I remember him stomping _all_ over Ororo. Or are you just conveniently forgetting how he hung back and let Ororo and even you give him orders because he was trying to work for _our_ Dream, not his? Doesn't fit your theory so well, does it?"

"Fits just fine. The man was slumming. Wanted to infiltrate us to take control of the New Mutants. He told Guthrie so, or did you forget that?"

"He said that to make the Hellfire Club think he was still the old ruthless bastard and that they wouldn't be able to control him through threatening the New Mutants. But you're never going to believe that, are you? Because you just refuse to accept _any_ evidence that he's not a psycho anymore, that he's dealing with his demons the same as you dealt with yours."

"If I see some evidence, maybe I'll believe it. My gut instinct tells me Maggie's nuts, and he's dragging you down with him, and you're bein' stupid enough and naive enough to let him."

"And my gut instinct tells me that the only reason you think that way is that he tried to kill you. After you'd gutted him twice, and the first time he didn't do a damn thing to you before _or_ after."

"And the second time he was tryin' to kill his son."

"Who's working for us, too."

"Never said Pietro wasn't a dick. 'Sides, I wouldn't give a shit that he tried to _kill_ me. That ain't what he did. He could've just ripped my head off, he wanted to kill me. No, what he did wasn't a clean kill. He wanted me to suffer, and he got it."

"And the fact that his supposed former best friend was making him relive the horrors of a concentration camp at the time had nothing to do with that. Why don't you blame the Professor?"

"The Professor ain't to blame for Magneto's sadism. Magneto is. I watched him torture a handful of Purifiers without blinking, without his smell even changin'. He didn't think they were human. Hell, he treats animals better. Man's a psychopath."

"And you're better?"

"I beat down my beast, Pryde. He still lets his take control whenever he feels like it. He can be _rational_ when it's in control. The only reason you don't see how fuckin' dangerous that is is you ain't got a beast of your own."

"You let yours take control whenever it will solve a problem for you. Don't give me that shit."

"This ain't _about_ me. Yeah, I got a beast of my own. Yeah, I've done some pretty terrible things. Yeah, I'm a killer, and I can do it in cold blood. But I ain't a terrorist. I don't threaten the whole flamin' planet. I don't drop planes outta the sky and make cars lose power at 60 miles an hour. I don't torture people for fun or because I wanna send a message to their teacher that I'm pissed with him."

"And Magnus doesn't turn his back on people he supposedly loved because they've joined the enemy. He's forgiven the Professor for ripping his mind out. You just aren't that big, are you."

"Like I said, it ain't about me and what he did to me. It's what he's gonna do to the world."

"As opposed to what you and the X-Men are not going to do, namely, any good at all. And do you _really_ think I'd be party to some dream of world conquest? All Magnus wants is to make a safe haven for mutantkind, and he's _done_ it, and you don't want to believe it. You're so convinced that Magneto is an evil person that you refuse to _look_ at any evidence, at what he's done with Genosha, and you're willing to write off people who were supposedly close friends because they're allied with him now."

"You're a little more than allied with him, Pryde. And yeah. You're naive and you're too powerful to be that naive. You got your thing for dangerous men, and you won't see that this guy's danger isn't just a little bit of spice to make yer love life exciting. He's a real threat to the world and you won't see it, and you're workin' to help him. You expect us to be friends?"

"So are we enemies?"

"You tell me."

"Yeah. Yeah, we are."

"If that's the way you want it."

"That's the way _you_ want it. As long as you hate Magnus so much, as long as you won't listen to me or accept anything I say about him, as long as you decide to treat me like the enemy because I'm allied with Magnus... then you're a threat."

"Sure hope so."

"Well, good, then. Because I want you to know something. I'm not your little Kitty anymore."

"Never thought you were."

"I know. What I'm saying is, I've been doing this a full third of my life now, and I'm getting training from Magnus and Pietro as well, and I am just as dangerous as you think I am. You get in our way, Logan, and I'll stop you. I won't let our old friendship get in my way. And if you hurt him, I'll rip out your heart, I swear it."

And she dropped through the floor.

Logan studied the spot where she'd been for a minute in silence before muttering, "Already have, darlin'. Already have."


	5. Roman A Clef 3: Hole In The Bay

_This story is the first of three (so far) loosely autobiographical fanfic pieces, that I refer to as the Roman A Clef series. They are set within the larger universe of the Moebius Arc._

* * *

****

Hole In The Bay

I wonder if I'm under mind control. I don't want to do this. But I want to. But I don't want to. But it doesn't feel like a telepathic compulsion. But it doesn't feel like me.

__

Walk on through the growing noise of your inescapable path/Walk willingly into the dark/Nothing can touch you now

I'm running away and I'm being a coward and I'm being what I swore I'd never be. Said I'd never run out on him like she did. Said I'd never leave my kids to others like my mom did. I thought I was brave, I was strong, I was so-very-tough, hardened superheroine. Hey, I faced death twenty times before I was 14. I should be stronger than this.

__

There's a hole in the river/Where my auntie lies...

I must not really want to. Because I could just sink into the ground, and I'm not. Is it different, to disappear into the ground or to make a hole in the water?

__

As I descend from grace/ in arms of undertow/I will take my place/In the great Below

The songs won't stop. They run through my head like a compulsion, like a crescendo of music, a mix tape of death and darkness, the soundtrack to the destruction of Kate Pryde. I could really use some Cats Laughing right around now, but no. I'm getting Crowded House and Nine Inch Nails and Information Society and it's all the dark stuff. fits, though. If I could think of happy songs maybe I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing.

Walk to the water. Hole in the bay.

And I'm walking half a mile rather than sinking into the ground because I don't want to. But I do want to. But I don't.

I just want it to stop. Just stop. Just stop, stop. Stop.

Because it's so stupid and I'm such a miserable failure for wanting to die that I have to die to get away from knowing what a failure I am. Because my babies are killing me and the man I love is killing me and what kind of a person _says_ that? What kind of a person is such a bad mother she has to die to get away from her children? Oh god, Magnus, don't tell them why, never tell them why, but you don't know why, I never told _you_ why...

Because I was supposed to be strong enough to take it. I have to support him. I believe in his work.

But I could be a diplomat or a hardass hawkish advisor or a techie or a superheroine or a can of whoopass. I could be a councillor or I could be a warrior or I could be an inventor but I couldn't be a mother. Not when it was all I was. Not when I was shut out of advising and superheroing and fighting and science and everything else because you don't do those things with an infant and a two-year-old, and _he_ won't help, he barely makes time to play with them, and he won't let Pietro help even if he _would_ and he keeps sending Joseph and Lorna and Amelia out to do stuff and they don't help and I don't get to do anything but run around after children. I'm alone.

I never thought this would happen to me. I never through I'd be reduced, that I'd be a mother and it wouldn't make me bigger, I wouldn't be better than my mother and able to be more selfless and a hero at the same time. I never thought I'd disappear. I'm a genius, I'm an inventor, I'm a superhero. Now I feel like my brain is congealed oatmeal and everything I wanted to be and everything I was is gone and there's nothing left but a womb on legs.

And he did this to me. I begged for help but I couldn't ask hard enough because what he's doing is so important and I support it and he loves me, he tells me how grateful he is for what I'm doing with the kids and I hate myself for betraying him like this. I hate myself for leaving like Magda did. But I thought I'd be able to stand up to him but I couldn't stand up to him because what he wants is so reasonable because mothers _do_ take care of their babies and everyone else can do it and it's so important that someone trustworthy be with them all the time and he only trusts me and he loves me so I can't say no when it's just what I selfishly want against their safety and the future of mutantkind. 

And I'm a mother. I'm supposed to give up everything I am selflessly and like doing it. I _wanted_ Ian and Atarah. I went through hell to have them. It's not right that I feel like they're destroying me. It's not right that I feel like they took away everything I valued about my life, everything I valued about _me_ in a constant welter of dirty diapers and crying and getting into stuff and not sleeping at night and refusing to take naps and I'm alone and a woman with babies is nothing but a mother, not a person, not a superhero, not smart and strong and self-willed but just nothing. A shiny bright blur to her kids, like the sun with no features, you reach for it but you don't _care_ about it, it doesn't have any thoughts or feelings, it just exists to shine on you. And a woman with babies is invisible to everyone else. A hole in space. 

When I was phasing out of reality, when I was 14 and drifting to bits, everyone cared. _He_ cared. He almost sold his soul to Doom to save me. When I'm 24 and phasing out of reality metaphorically he doesn't care and no one else does either. 

I can't be a hole in space. I can't drift apart into a gas cloud and live through it. I can't live like this. I'll be a hole in the bay instead.

And I think to myself as I walk, this is stupid and selfish and evil. And I think, I need help, and if I wasn't a coward I'd ask. But who am I supposed to tell? I _told_ Magnus what I needed and he didn't care. Because he won't let anyone he doesn't trust, meaning no one but me, near the babies. And he offered to build me a robot to help like that's going to do any bloody good. A _robot?_ To take care of _babies?_ He's such an idiot. And I don't know if he'll try robots when I'm gone but I did scream at him and tell him only the sorriest excuse for a father would think of such a thing and no wonder Pietro and Wanda hate him. Which I shouldn't have said because I don't want to hurt him but a _robot?_ Babies need people. But they need more than just one. Okay, they need more than just me because I _can't_. I tried for two and a half years. I can't. I love them, I'll kill him if he tries to foist them off on a bloody _robot_ for all that's holy, but I can't. I can't.

And I can't ask the X-Men for help. Magnus wouldn't tolerate them really helping me and all they'd do anyway is blame him. And it would get back to Logan even if I asked Kurt or Piotr privately, and I won't give that bastard the satisfaction. I won't let them all know because they'd blame Magnus and it's _not_ his fault, he's busy running a country, he had every reason to expect I could handle being a full time mother. Women have done this since the dawn of time. There's no reason I can't do this. But I can't.

How does Jean do it? When Cable showed up and gave them baby Chris back and Jean quit the X-Men and Scott didn't, Jean didn't snap. But maybe this was always what Jean wanted. And she could _do_ something, she could take over teaching the new generation of New Mutants and be surrounded by the X-Men and they'd all help out every chance they could and we all wanted to take care of the baby and take some pressure off her and we still _valued_ her. She didn't go on missions except in emergencies, and then her mom or Scott's grandparents would take Chris, or Professor X would watch him while they all went out, but even if she was rarely in combat she never disappeared. She got to do what she loved, she got to be a part of things. I'm off in the Baby Ghetto while Magnus and Amelia and Mystique and Pietro and Joseph are all off wrestling with the rest of the council or fighting to protect Genosha. It's all I've become. No one values me for anything anymore.

Is this what happened to you, Mom? Did Dad and I make you disappear? Is that why you couldn't love me, really? Is that why you pressured me to be as independent as I could from as early an age as you could make it happen, why I was making my own breakfast and dressing myself for kindergarten, why in the end you left us? Or left Dad and let me go my own way without any attempt to keep contact with me? Did you feel yourself phasing out of reality? Is that why you ran away from me?

I've hated you for doing that for so long. I wanted to be a mom like Ororo, not like you. But Ororo didn't have to give up everything she was to be my mentor. She wasn't my mother. She knew me when I could hold a rational conversation and join in the X-Men's work. That's the only taste of motherhood I've ever had myself, mentoring younger people, aside from a few brief stints babysitting Chris. I never imagined I'd fail even more spectacularly than you. 

And I can't live with knowing what a failure as a mother I am. I can't live knowing that I had to run away. I have to die instead. Because if I ran away and I stayed alive it'd haunt me every day that I left you guys. But if I die I won't know it.

Which means I'm a coward. Because that's the biggest copout ever.

And I'm not entirely sure I really want to.

I'm almost to the bay and my eyes are blind with crying and I just want it to stop. But I don't want to run out on my babies. But I want to make Magnus pay for letting me disappear, for treating me like I no longer have any value except to care for his children and that he doesn't have to help me, he doesn't have to have any role except to be the stern patriarch who says the kids aren't safe, I have to be with them all the time, I don't get a break to be a hero or a warrior or a councillor or a techie or me. But I don't want to hurt him and abandon him like Magda did. But I don't want to live if I can't be Kate. But I don't want to die.

I'm dying already. Dying inside and none of them care. It would serve them all right if it happened for real.

But that's stupid. It's stupid to die for a reason like that. But I can't tell them I want to because I can't be the kind of person who uses suicide attempts to get attention. But if I do it then I'm even stupider than that. But if I don't do it then it will never stop. 

__

I can't see ever feeling right again/I'm on a raft on a river that's roaring away with me/What good does it do me to have what I want/When I'm in no shape to enjoy what I have

And if i have to die better it be with my soul mostly intact. Better to leave my babies when they're young enough to adapt to someone else. Better that they miss me than that they grow up to hate me.

But I don't think I really want to leave them. 

I don't think I really want to die. Wouldn't I have done it by now if I did?

I sit down at the pier at the edge of Hammer Bay. I don't want to do this. But I do. But I have to think.

If anyone cared, if anyone was willing to try to help me, to let me be me again, I might not have to. If I haven't disappeared all the way. If there's anyone who still remembers Kate Pryde the human being and not the mother of Magneto's children.

If he cared, if he loved me, he might help me and then I wouldn't have to.

I'm going to sit here and wait. I can do it anytime. Just jump into the water and make a hole in the bay. But once I do it there's no going back. So I'll wait.

If anyone notices I'm gone and looks for me, and helps me, I won't have to. And if they don't notice, then I'm already gone, and I may as well disappear.

I'll wait.

* * *

_Songs, in order, are "Empty" by Information Society, "Hole In The River" by Crowded House, "The Great Below" by Nine Inch Nails, and "Closing In" by Information Society._


End file.
